The soul's journey: a map of the doctrine

Siva, souls and the bond have always been. Each is different, and each has its own part.

Saiva Siddhanta begins with three words. Pati is the Lord, Siva. Pasu is the soul. Pasam is the bond that holds the soul. All three have always been. None of them had a beginning.

Siva is one. He knows everything by Himself, and nothing can bind Him. Souls are many. Each soul can know, but it needs help to know: while bound, it knows through a body and a mind; when free, it knows through Siva's grace.

Nobody made the soul, and it is not a piece broken off from Siva. The bond is real too, which is why freedom takes more than a new idea about ourselves. Yet the three are not equals. The bond cannot know anything, and the soul cannot do the Lord's work.

Through all of this Siva is with the soul. He is never bound with it, and never far from it. Tiruvarutpayan opens with exactly this:

Read more: Three realities, Sivagnana Bodham, Tiruvarutpayan.

Anavam darkens the soul's knowing, Kanmam ties deeds to their fruits, and Mayai gives the body and world in which the soul lives.

The bond has three strands, called the three impurities, mummalam.

Anavam is the deepest. It darkens the soul's knowing, so that the soul does not see its own condition or the Lord who helps it. It shows itself as "I" and "mine", but it is far more than ordinary pride. It has held the soul from the beginning.

Kanmam, karma, is deeds and their fruits. What we do in thought, word and body bears fruit, and the fruit shapes what we live through next. We remain responsible for what we do. Siva sees that each fruit reaches its doer, but that does not make our choices His.

Mayai is the stuff from which bodies, minds and worlds are made. Here it does not mean that the world is unreal. The world is real. It limits the soul, and yet it is also where the soul learns. Even part of the bond becomes, in Siva's hands, a help towards freedom.

Each strand answers a different question. Why can the soul not see? Anavam. Why do our deeds follow us? Kanmam. Where does the soul live and learn? Mayai. Keeping them apart stops us calling every trouble karma, or hoping that a change of scene will remove Anavam.

Read more: Why the soul is bound, Sivaprakasam, Tiruvarutpayan.

The soul lies hidden in Anavam alone, lives in a body, and is at last set free: Kevalam, Sakalam and Suddham.

The soul passes through three broad states.

In Kevalam, the soul lies with Anavam alone. It has no body and no mind to know with, so it can know nothing. It is still a soul, but a soul in darkness. This stillness is not freedom: doing nothing does not remove the bond.

In Sakalam, Siva gives the soul a body, senses and a world, each suited to its karma. Now it can see, think, act and live with the results. All three bonds are at work here. And here too the soul can worship, hear the teaching, think it over and serve. This life in the world is where the soul's darkness begins to lift.

Suddham, also written Suttam, is the state of freedom, given by Siva's grace. The soul knows without the old obstruction. It is still itself, and fully awake, not lost or asleep. It still depends on Siva, as it always did, but now it knows it, and lives it with joy.

These are not the same as waking, dreaming and deep sleep. A quiet mind, or a night of dreamless sleep, is not freedom.

Read more: Why the soul is bound, Sivaprakasam, What freedom means.

We know by seeing, by reasoning, and by a trustworthy word. Each has its own reach.

How do we know that something is true? Sivagnana Siddhiyar names three ways, the pramanas: seeing, reasoning, and a trustworthy word.

Seeing is knowing something directly, without doubt or mistake. But our explanation of what we saw can still be wrong.

Reasoning reaches what we cannot see, through a sign that always goes with it: where there is smoke, there is fire. Seeing two things together once is not enough; the link must hold every time.

A trustworthy word lets us know what someone reliable tells us. For Siddhanta the highest trustworthy word is sacred teaching, the Agamas. It tells us what seeing and reasoning cannot reach. Even so, it asks us to understand and think it over, not to stop thinking.

Later steps speak of knowing through grace. That is something else: not a way of checking a claim, but the soul coming to know Siva as its darkness is removed.

Read more: Sivagnana Siddhiyar, The Agamas.

Siva's five acts keep the soul's life going and bring it, in the end, to freedom by grace.

Siva does five things for souls: creation, preservation, withdrawal, veiling and grace.

Creation gives souls worlds, bodies and minds. It does not create the souls themselves; they have always been. Preservation keeps that life going, so the soul can act and live with what follows. Withdrawal draws it all back for a time, as rest. But the bond is not removed just because a body or a world is withdrawn.

Veiling, tirodhanam, holds back the soul's full sight for a while, so that it can ripen through living. Grace, arul, gives the soul the knowing that sets it free. All five are done for the same soul, out of the same care. That care began long before the soul noticed it.

Siva acts through His Sakti, His power, never apart from Him, as will, knowledge and action. Mayai gives the material; Siva shapes it but never becomes it. He is untouched by the changes the soul goes through. He is with us, but our ignorance is never His.

The five acts tie the earlier steps together: why the soul has a body, why deeds bear fruit, and why only grace can set it free. Nataraja's dance at Chidambaram shows these five acts in a form we can worship.

Read more: How Siva helps, Nataraja and the five acts, Sivaprakasam.

The tattvas are the instruments the soul lives and knows through. The soul uses them; it is not made of them.

The tattvas list, part by part, what Mayai gives the soul so that it can see, act and live in a world. There are thirty-six, in three groups: five pure tattvas, seven Vidya tattvas and twenty-four Atma tattvas. They are the soul's instruments. The soul is not built out of them.

The twenty-four are the instruments of everyday life: four inner instruments, five senses of knowing, five organs of action, five subtle elements and five gross elements. Of the inner four, the mind gathers and attends, the intellect decides, the ego says "I", and Chittam reflects. Each does its work. None of them is the soul.

The seven Vidya tattvas set the measure of the soul's life: time, the order in which deeds bear fruit, and limited powers to know, to act and to desire. Here Purusha means the soul joined to these limits, not a new soul made from Mayai. The five pure tattvas belong to a higher, purer order of Mayai. Two of them are called Siva tattva and Sakti tattva, but they are not Siva Himself or His power.

Why count them at all? To learn the difference between ourselves and the instruments we use. Stilling one faculty does not remove the root bond. Freedom comes back, always, to grace.

Read more: The thirty-six tattvas, Unmai Vilakkam, Sivaprakasam.

Service, worship, inner discipline and true knowing: four ways the soul turns towards Siva.

There are four ways. Chariyai is service, such as cleaning the temple or gathering flowers. Kiriyai is worship with the rites one has been taught. Yogam is turning the attention inward in contemplation. Jnanam is true knowing of the Lord, the soul and the bond, through the guru and grace.

None of these is thrown away when the next is reached. The last sutra of Sivagnana Bodham sends even the freed soul to Siva's devotees and to His temple. Knowing gives love a firmer ground, and the outer and inner sides of practice help each other.

Diksha, initiation, begins a bond of teaching and responsibility between guru and disciple. Offering a flower at home, an initiated person's daily worship, and a priest's worship in the temple each have their own rules. One initiation does not qualify a person for every role, or to initiate others. The page on worship explains these differences.

So what can each of us do today? Sing a hymn, serve others, pray. The particular forms of mantra and ritual worship are learned from a teacher. Reading about a rite tells you about it; a guru's instruction gives it to you to live.

Read more: The four ways, Worship and daily practice, The Agamas, Sivagnana Bodham.

The bond ripens, the soul grows even towards pleasure and pain, and grace descends: three signs that the soul is ready.

When is the soul ready to be freed? The texts name three turning points.

Malaparipakam is the ripening of the bond. Like fruit that is ready to fall, Anavam loosens its hold. It is the bond that ripens, not the soul that is destroyed. Living and practice help this ripening, but freedom itself is grace's work.

Iruvinaiyoppu is evenness towards the fruits of good and bad deeds. Pleasure no longer grips us with craving, and pain no longer rules us through fear. This does not mean good and bad deeds are worth the same, or that they cancel out like a balanced account. It means the soul no longer clings to either kind of fruit.

Sattinipatam is the descent of grace. Siva has always been with the soul; now the soul can receive Him and know Him. Grace comes to teach it in a visible form, as the guru. The veiling of the earlier steps opens, at last, into mercy.

These three go together. No one can prove them by counting prayers or by declaring themselves detached. They teach us patience, attention and trust in grace, and they are not for judging how ripe someone else is.

Read more: The guru and grace, Sivaprakasam, Tiruvarutpayan.

The five syllables hold the whole teaching: Siva, grace, the soul and its bonds, in one prayer.

The Panchaksharam, the five syllables, holds the whole map in the Lord's name. In the doctrinal reading used here, Na signifies veiling, Ma impurity, Si Siva, Va grace and Ya the soul. Every step of this guide is there: the three realities, the bonds, and the help that frees.

The forms Na-Ma-Si-Va-Ya and Si-Va-Ya-Na-Ma are read in relation to the soul's bound condition and its turning towards Siva through grace. In the first, the soul stands among its bonds; in the second, it has turned towards Siva and grace. This is a way of understanding, not a spell: moving the letters about does not free anyone.

The name is above all sung with love. Sambandar's hymn joins the chanting, the melting heart and the good path. Knowing the meanings deepens the remembering, while the hymn speaks straight to Siva. Understanding and love meet in the same prayer.

Formal japa, repeating the mantra as a practice, is received from a guru, with initiation, as the worship page explains. Singing the name in a hymn, and remembering Siva with love, is open to everyone. This guide explains the meaning; it does not teach a method of practice.

Read more: The five syllables, Worship and daily practice, Tiruvarutpayan, Unmai Vilakkam.

Grace removes the bond's hold. The soul stays itself, one with Siva and never apart from Him.

Karma explains what happens while the soul is bound. It cannot free the soul. Good deeds matter, but freedom is not a prize earned by piling them up. Through the guru and grace, the soul comes to know the Lord, and stops thinking of itself as the sole doer. The darkness that narrowed its knowing no longer rules it.

Sivaprakasam teaches that freedom is not simply the body falling away. The karma that shaped this body runs its course, and the freed soul goes on living in it. This is jivanmukti, freedom while still in the body. The body lives on, but the old "I alone know, I alone act" does not come back.

Freedom shows itself in a life of iraipani, service as the Lord's own work. Sivagnana Bodham ends with love for Siva's devotees and worship of Siva in the temple. Freedom does not make love, worship and service pointless. The freed soul still acts, but without the old claim of "mine" that bound it.

Now we can return to the first step. Siva is still the Lord. The soul is still a soul. Only the bond has lost its hold. They are two, and yet never apart. The journey does not end with the soul destroyed, nor with the soul becoming a second Lord. It ends with the soul knowing and loving Siva, in the freedom His grace gives.

Read more: What freedom means, Sivagnana Bodham, Sivaprakasam, Tiruvarutpayan.